Texas continues adding jobs in October

New Mexico’s unemployment rate remained stubbornly high in October and is now at 6.8 percent, the second highest in the United States. That rate is the lowest so far this year, but was slightly lower at 4.5 percent for October 2014. The largest gains were in health care/social assistance (up 23,000 jobs), leisure/hospitality (18,700) and food services (18,000). OH added 30,800 jobs last month, the third largest increase in October.

The slight uptick in the unemployment rate comes as the harvest season comes to a close and jobs in the farming and food processing sector come to a close.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending November 14 fell by 5,000 during a critical week for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to a report released Thursday by the Labor Department.

“There are certainly many areas of the state that grew many more jobs, but of course they’re much bigger”, Panuccio said.

Alabama is still well above the national unemployment rate of 5 percent, but the improvement in Alabama followed a national trend. In fact, job growth in Missoula County has increased. Federal government employment did not change.

Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi chief financial economist Chris Rupkey circulated an email after the report with the title “Jobs market is literally on fire in most states in the union”.

Statewide unemployment fell a tenth of a percentage point from the month earlier.

North Dakota had the lowest jobless rate in the U.S.at 2.8 percent in October.

The leisure and hospitality services sector lost about 7,200 jobs between September and October.

The Pensacola metro area had nearly 5,300 job openings in October, including 1,100 in the STEM occupations – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. “It is very likely that this growth will drive the unemployment rate back below 5 percent by the end of the year”.

The Texas unemployment rate for October rose to 4.4 percent, the Texas Workforce Commission reported Friday.